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Amazon CloudWatch vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (12th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively address issues with seamless monitoring while enhancing custom metrics functionality
We use CloudWatch for monitoring and logging. It helps us monitor our applications' performance, particularly in ensuring that every API hit returns a response within four seconds, which is our SLA. We also monitor invocation errors in Lambda and use CloudWatch alerts to notify us of any issues…
Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features of Amazon CloudWatch are metrics, dashboards, alarms, logs, events, logs insight, and application insights."
"The solution gives us very good real-time data."
"Monitoring time and ensuring ease in it is the most valuable feature."
"The detection is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is reliability."
"What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch."
"I can put it in a simple term, its simplicity is always there."
"You can automate actions or use AWS functionalities like auto-scaling, where you can configure the metrics to add more nodes if the threshold is exceeded."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
 

Cons

"For monitoring applications or for APM, CloudWatch has some limitations. You cannot monitor application performance from CloudWatch, and you have to go for a third-party tool."
"The monitoring part and GUI are areas in Amazon CloudWatch that have shortcomings currently and can be considered for improvements in the future."
"Right now, in relation to monitoring services, there are too many services and too many metrics per service."
"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."
"It's not very intuitive. It doesn't have drag-and-drop functionality to trigger actions from notifications."
"Amazon CloudWatch's pricing needs improvement."
"The technical support must be improved."
"The product's configuration has some challenges. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."
"The tool is not expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing is average."
"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"It’s an open-source solution."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"The product is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline, which I see as a disadvantage given the price.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage. Another aspect that needs improvement is the look and feel of custom dashboards, which currently do not matc...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,688 professionals have used our research since 2012.